Victoria’s long-running dispute with paramedics is over “once and for all”, the government says, after it struck a deal on pay and conditions.
The deal, which will provide a pay increase of about 3% per year for paramedics, looks set to end one of Victoria’s longest industrial disputes.
For the past two years, paramedics have clashed with the former Coalition government over pay and conditions, leading to the now-familiar sight of ambulances driving around Victoria with large anti-government slogans daubed on the windows.
Labor, which won power on 29 November, had promised to end the standoff as quickly as possible. The board of Ambulance Victoria resigned at the request of the new premier, Daniel Andrews, earlier this month.
The new pay deal will include a $3,000 sign-on bonus plus a 6% pay increase from 1 January 2015. There will be further 3% pay increases in July 2015 and July 2016.
The paramedics union, some of whose members campaigned for Labor during the state election, said the offer was better than a similar deal put forward by the Coalition because it lasts longer.
As part of the deal, which will be voted on by employees in January, paramedics will have to suspend all industrial action and undertake regular performance reviews.
“We’ve done in two weeks what the Liberals couldn’t do in two years,” Andrews said.
“Over the last few years, too many lives were taken too soon and too many loved ones were put at risk. Labor ended the war on our hard-working paramedics, then we ended the ambulance dispute and now we’ll fix the ambulance system.”
However, Mary Wooldridge, the opposition health spokeswoman, said the deal included no productivity gains that would improve ambulance service performance and questioned whether a secret deal had been struck by Labor and the union before the election.
“Daniel Andrews needs to come clean on these secret deals and when they occurred,” she said.
